A Word, Please: It’s not possible to badly split an infinitive

Not long ago while editing a series of articles, I noticed that the writer had strange ideas about where to put adverbs. Many were placed before the verbs and some before the subjects too.

“He sincerely had been sorry.” “Quickly, it will be the best way to get there.” “Haphazardly, he was running down the street.” Lots of stuff like that.

When I mentioned it to a colleague who had also read the articles, he thought maybe the writer was doing it to avoid splitting infinitives. If that’s the case, the writer has several lessons to learn, the most important being: There’s no rule against splitting infinitives. Never has been, never will be. It’s just an old myth.

But more interesting is that none of the adverbs were near infinitives. Not even close. “Had been” is not an infinitive. “Will be” is not an infinitive.” “Was running” is not an infinitive.

An infinitive is the base form of a verb, which is usually paired with the particle “to,” as in “to be,” “to run,” “to write” and so on. Victims of the split infinitive myth believe an error occurs when an adverb is inserted after the “to” as in “to really be” or “to haphazardly run” or, most famously, “to boldly go.”

But not only is there no rule against doing so, the “to” isn’t really part of the infinitive anyway. So you couldn’t split an infinitive if you wanted to.

Our writer’s odd choices centered not on infinitives but on verb phrases. In syntactical analysis, a verb phrase can be a single word or a group of words expressing an action or state of being.

In “Robert works,” the verb phrase is “works.” (I know it’s odd to think of a single word as a phrase, but that’s standard in syntactical analysis.) In “Robert has worked” the verb phrase also includes the auxiliary verb “has.” In “Robert was working,” “Robert had been working” and “Robert might have been working,” the verb phrases are all the stuff after “Robert.”

There is no rule — not even a mythical one — against splitting verb phrases. An adverb can be positioned anywhere in or near a verb phrase as long as it makes sense and is clear.

Slowly, Robert was working. Robert slowly was working. Robert was slowly working. Robert was working slowly.

All those example sentences are grammatical. Obviously, some are better than others and, of course, they have different emphases. So where you put the adverb can make a difference, it just can’t break a rule because there isn’t one.

The word “only,” however, is subject to a similar myth. Some people say it must be right next to the word to which it applies: I have eyes for only you.

This can be good policy. “Only wearing hemp, Jeremy lives an organic lifestyle.” Does this mean that Jeremy only wears hemp and doesn’t grow or smoke it? Or does it mean that he wears no other fabrics? We don’t know, because the placement of “only” makes it unclear which word it modifies.

But that’s usually not a problem. No one who hears “I only have eyes for you” would figure that the speaker’s ears and nostrils are up for grabs.

So if you ever stop to wonder where to put an adverb, my advice is: Stop wondering. For the author of the aforementioned articles, bad writing resulted from overthinking it. Most of the time, your adverb will land in an ideal spot with no conscious effort on your part.

JUNE CASAGRANDE is author of “It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences.” She can be reached at [email protected].